Vision

Charmed with the ceaseless music of the brook—
Babbling with hope and with Youth's deathless song;
Full with the joys of lovers who, sans book,
Have found that happiness is just to long
For some sweet face, some voice, some footstep known,
But, better still, to feel some ardent press
Of lips that are with peerless passion blown,
Mad for the magic of a deathless kiss—

Charmed with the sound and what it bears to me
From out the distance of the unborn years
I weep—O pinewood shadows chilling me
With shadow-haunted grief, presage of tears !
Must Youth, whose orient wings are lightning-plumed,
Be crowned with grief, to sure death be doomed ?